If, like me, you've been following Landfall Games CEO Wilhelm Nylund on Twitter, you've been subjected to perhaps hundreds of amusing gifs from Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. But when is it coming out, you may have cried, desperate to make your own gifs of wacky (yet totally accurate) physics-based battles.
Well, today's the day. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is now on Steam Early Access. I played it a bit this weekend and yes, I made some gifs of my own. Like, a hundred of them.
While the game isn't complete, there are currently 50 levels of a campaign mode available, which takes you from stone age battles (guys with clubs, axe-wielding chieftains, woolly mammoths) to farmland clashes (farmers with pitchforks, hobbits, and potion-hurling alchemists) to medieval times (knights, squires, kings, and catapults) to Greek mythology (Minotaurs, hoplites, and a lightning-bolt hurling Zeus) to the Vikings (berserkers, longboats, and winged Valkyries).
You might not guess from the silliness on display, but there is some actual strategy in the campaign, as you're always an era behind the AI-controlled enemy army. So when they start breaking out the archers and ballistas and you're still running around with pitchforks and wheelbarrows, you're going to have to get creative to win. Some levels are pretty tricky to beat, but this is a game where failure is as much fun as success.
You can also mess around in sandbox mode and simulate battles between any armies and units you want. Send mammoths to fight minotaurs or put cavemen up against catapults. Want to make a single Arthurian king fight a hundred unarmed but very persistent hobbits? You can do that. I did that.
Once a battle has begun you can fly around the map watching from any angle you choose, and there's slow-motion and super-slow-mo so you can simulate a dramatic, 300-style battle as I did with the king below.
I use the king in a lot of my battles. I sort of love him.
There are more armies to come—in the menu, one unavailable tab shows what looks like a ninja's star, and another shows a pistol crossed with a sword, so we've got plenty more totally accurate battle options to look forward to while TABS continues to be developed while in Early Access. There's also a grayed-out option for a 'unit creator' in the main menu, so it looks like we'll be able to design our own warriors. Someday.
You'll find Totally Accurate Battle Simulator on Steam for $15.
Okay, last gif. For now.
Five months ago, I took a trip through Wilhelm Nylund’s wonderful world of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator GIFs. TABS is a game about assembling stupid googly-eyed armies to fight other stupid googly-eyed armies, and Nylund is in charge of the unit design. The unit design is spectacular.
TABS isn’t out yet and we don’t know when it will be, which sucks because Nylund’s racked up another five months worth of GIFs and I can’t wait to start making my own. Until then, feast your eyes on the lethal bumbling of idiotic mammoths and the improbably-effective chopping of neck holstered axe-wielders.
Look, it’s hard to describe the magic with words. There is a reason this post is 90% GIFs.
Video games have been simulating battles since 1873, but none of them have the same reverence for historical authenticity as Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. It’s an upcoming physicsy fightfest where you pit hordes of samurai, trebuchets and chicken men against mishmashes of rival units – not to be confused with Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, a spinoff battle royale game where you shoot stuff yourself rather than watching from above.
It won’t be out for a while, but in the meantime you can (and should) feast your eyes on the dev videos below. William Nylund has been revolutionising warfare with snake guns and shield fans.
Take the open-world loot-o-murderhiking of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, add wacky physics, then sprinkle over a few actually quite good ideas, and you might have something like Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, a game I’ve been enjoying more than I’d expected. It’s janky, wait times for a round are huge, and it won’t replace Plunkbat in my heart, but it’s free its first few days so hey, you may as well grab it before it costs $5.
It’s also one of the few games containing my three favourite FPS features: mixed-weapon dual wielding; seeing your own legs and body when you look down; and physics so goofy that you can boost yourself by jumping then firing at the ground. (more…)